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🚨How British companies are bolstering Vladimir Putin’s war machine🚨
A depressing thread.
But an important one.
With some pretty shocking charts.
Let’s begin with the “official” picture. It suggests UK trade with Russia has collapsed since Feb 2022. Down by 74%…
Now let's fill in the data.
Look how we're no longer exporting cars or heavy machinery to Russia. Because the govt is well aware this stuff could be repurposed into weapons. So the official line is that this is a big success story.
Looks like Russia's economy is being starved
But clearly the Russian economy isn't doing as badly as all that. Indeed Russia is due to grow faster than any G7 nation this year 👇
And that's just the economy. Now look at the battlefield and Russia is looking v strong. No shortage of weapons/drones etc despite sanctions
Why?
Well let's imagine you're a Russian unit needing weapons. Imagine you rely on a certain input or tool from the UK. Back in the past you'd get it directly. But you can't anymore.
Here's one solution: set up a shell company in a friendly Caucasus state like Kyrgyzstan...
The genius of this is that there's no sanctions on these other neighbouring states. But once your goods arrive you can send them straight over to Russia.
They've been laundered.
Voila Russia gets its machinery which it can use to make weaponry etc, in spite of the sanctions.
Which raises a question: is this kind of thing actually happening? Well let's look at UK exports to Kyrgyzstan and ask the question: have they gone up since the outbreak of war? Well, have a look...
That's up by more than 1,100%.
And NB these aren't just ANY goods. They're precisely the machinery/car imports we can no longer send to Russia. All going to Kyrgyzstan. And then almost certainly onwards to Russia (tho the paper trail tends to end when goods leave UK)
It's a similar story in Armenia. And in many other Caucasus nations. A massive leap post invasion/sanctions...
Nor is this just a UK-specific story. Not in the slightest. If anything the volumes from Germany/Poland are worse.
@robin_j_brooks has been documenting this via EU figs for months. He's a must-follow for more on this extraordinarily under-reported story
And there's more (I'm afraid).
Because the issue isn't just the surge in volumes of trade to these caucasus nations, but precisely WHAT kinds of things we've been exporting to these countries.
So, I've looked at those numbers.
And what emerges is even more disturbing...
Starting point is to note the EU & G7 partners have a list of what they call "Common High Priority Items".
It's 45 categories of goods we KNOW the Russians are important and repurposing into weapons.
Because we've found them on the battlefield... finance.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2…
Which raises a question: are these items among the stuff Britain is sending to these states (which anyone with an ounce of sense must know are being diverted ro Russia)?
The answer is yes.
Very much yes 🫥
Here's the chart specifically looking at these items.
The items we KNOW are being used to kill Ukrainians. What you see here 👇 is trade flows specifically of these banned items to these states (who then almost certainly send them straight to Russia).
That's a 500%+ increase.
Now let's look at the specific line items we're talking about here.
These are the main "banned" goods UK companies re sending to four Russian neighbours👇
Top one: "Parts of aeroplanes, helicopters or unmanned aircraft".
In other words, parts you can use to make/repair drones...
Few things: 1. The absolute numbers 👆are not massive.
But add up figs across EU (viz @robin_j_brooks) & it's MUCH bigger. & then consider stuff going via Turkey/China. 2. Real story is TREND. 3. Sorry I described Kyrgyzstan as a caucasus nation 🤦♂️It's Central Asia. Whoops!
Anyway.
Here's my full story on this shocking phenomenon👇
On how UK companies seem to be sending millions of pounds worth of supposedly banned equipment to Russia via the shadow economy.
Equipment which we know has been used to kill Ukrainians... Ugh news.sky.com/story/british-…
Of course this is hardly the first time trade has trumped war. Consider the episode I wrote about in #MaterialWorld when Britain actually proposed buying binoculars off the Germans during WWI in exchange for rubber, so they could all carry on killing each other more efficiently…
🧵SALT🧵
It's been snowing in the UK and the road gritters are out in force, begging the question:
Have you ever wondered where that grit actually COMES from?
The answer is more magical, beautiful and fascinating than you probably realised.
1/14
Because that dirty-looking salt being spread by trucks on our roads is actually the remains of an ancient ocean (actually two ancient oceans), buried deep beneath our feet.
Most of the stuff being spread in London comes from a single mine in Cheshire - at Winsford.
2/14
Here, about 20 to 40m beneath the meadows of Cheshire, is an enormous slab of halite, rock salt, the remains of an ancient inland sea a couple of hundred million years ago.
This is where most of our salt comes from.
3/14
🧵How worried should we (and @RachelReevesMP) be about the slightly nervy reaction from financial markets towards her first Budget?
Short answer: certainly a bit worried.
But perhaps not for the reasons you might expect...
Worth saying at the outset: these markets are volatile.
Trying to interpret movements in govt bonds is v tricky.
They're moved by all sorts of factors - fiscal, monetary, economic and structural - from all over the world.
So yesterday's Budget is only one of many factors here...
Even so, there has been a marked rise in UK bond yields following the Budget which is greater than what we're seeing in other markets.
This morning the UK 10 year bond yield hit the highest level in nearly a year. It's up 1.7% since yday - far more than US or German equivalents
🚨Latest UK population numbers just landed.
Two headlines:
- The UK natural population (eg domestic births minus deaths) is now FALLING - at the fastest rate in modern history.
- Yet OVERALL population is rising at the fastest rate since 1948 🤯
How? Lemme explain...
🧵
Nearly every year since records began a century and a bit ago, more people in the UK were born than died.
In the year to 2023, that changed.
664k births. 681k deaths.
The net drop of 16k is the biggest on record (also in % terms).
It's a watershed moment for UK demographics.
Yet the overall UK population rose.
& not by a little:
...at the fastest rate in 76 years! A near 1% increase.
That's a massive change in the number of people in the country.
How? You probably already know the reason...
🚨This is the story of how UK & EU goods are STILL going into Russia in vast quantities, despite sanctions.
Of how the economic war waged by the G7 is failing.
Of how I witnessed sanctions rules broken in plain sight.
But above all else it’s the story of a chart... 🧵
Here’s the chart in question. It shows you UK car exports to Russia.
And there’s a clear story here.
Look: when Russia invaded Ukraine, the UK (and for that matter most of the G7) imposed sanctions on Russia. So exports of cars to Russia stopped.
End of story, right?
Wrong, because now look at what happened to exports of UK cars to countries in the Caucasus and Central Asia.
At precisely the same moment as sanctions were imposed on Russia, exports of these cars to Russian neighbours suddenly ROSE.
🧵Here’s the extraordinary story of a Frenchman who came up with an invention that changed the world, before events took a twist.
It’s a rollercoaster story that just might help us solve one of the biggest challenges facing humanity.
Sounds far-fetched, I know, but read on…
The man in question was Nicolas Leblanc.
Born in 1742, he trained as a doctor but was always short of cash. He became the physician to Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orléans - a minor French royal. Like many enlightened intellectuals, his hobby was scientific experimentation.
And when he heard about a scientific competition, launched by the French Academy of Sciences and backed by none other than King Louis XVI, he jumped at the chance. The prize of 2,400 livres (quite a lot - a few years of earnings) would go to whoever could turn salt into soda ash
🧵Want to understand why weaning ourselves off fossil fuels like oil is such a tricky challenge?
Best place to start is with this ubiquitous toy👇
This is a thread about what I call the LEGO conundrum.
It begins when you ponder what a LEGO brick is actually made of...
Standard Lego bricks are made of something called Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene.
ABS is a tough thermoplastic you often find in the handles of scissors or the frames of hard carry-on baggage cases.
But Lego bricks are prob the most iconic application. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acrylonit…
It's worth saying btw not all Lego pieces are made out of ABS.
Baseplates are moulded from high impact polystyrene. Gearwheels are polyamide.
The small, flexible green pieces that look like plant stalks or flags are polyethylene, and so on and so on. lego.com/en-us/sustaina…